Mr. Ferris, with every sign of animation and surprise, was advancing across the grass.
"Why, Jo, you never told me that you expected Mrs. Gaunt to tea! This is an unlooked-for pleasure!" He shook hands with effusion, and Virgie felt repugnance in every nerve. The man's voice, his manner, even his good looks, were obviously second-rate. He sat down and began to make himself agreeable—or so he thought—by talk of the emptiest, and glances of the most eloquent. Almost everything he said was a scarcely veiled compliment. Joey had risen, and was helping nurse to remove the family, which was not inclined to part from the new friend who knew so much about steam engines and the other prime interests of life. Ferris had ten minutes' talk with the new beauty, and flattered himself that he made the most of his opportunity.
His fawning turned Virgie almost sick. From her heart she pitied Joey. But that young person was apparently well satisfied with her lot, and quite impervious to the fact that her husband was a bounder. As soon as she came back to the tea-table, Virgie urgently said that she must go. The doctor would not approve of her being out so many hours, even though she had rested all the time, and been so happy and well amused. Then at once Ferris offered to carry her to the car, and hardly waited for permission before taking her up in his arms, and at once seizing the chance to whisper something to the effect that Gaunt was, in his opinion, more to be envied than any man under the sun.
"What, to have his wife fall ill when he had been two days married? I don't fancy he would agree with you," replied Mrs. Gaunt, in a voice so frigid that it pierced even Ferris's hide and made him say to himself that he must put the brake on.
When he had deposited what he alluded to as his "fair burden" in her place, Virgie was almost ready to think that Gaunt's own arms were preferable. He, at least, took no unfair advantage of proximity. Joey took the steering wheel, and Ferris, after starting the engine for her, actually suggested that he should get in with Mrs. Gaunt. To her untold relief Joey declared that Mrs. Gaunt was an invalid, and already overtired. To her dismay, the man seemed inclined to persist, and the matter was finally settled by Joey's giving up the driver's seat to him, and herself getting into the tonneau with Virgie.
"He doesn't mean to bore people, but he certainly would have bored you all the way home with the story of his treasure cave," she remarked as they drove off.
"His treasure cave!"
"Yes. He thinks he has made a discovery. You know, part of our land includes the valley they call Branterdale. I expect Mr. Gaunt has told you that all this part of Derbyshire is limestone rock, and it is honeycombed with caves. We did not know we had any on our land, but the other day—that is, I should say, last season—when we were huntin', the fox ran across the river, and disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him. It was a narrow bit of the stream, between rocks, the bit that the guide-books tell you is like Dovedale in miniature. Of course, they all hunted and poked about, but they did not find so much as a rabbit-burrow. However, the thing worked in Percy's mind, and he went over afterwards on the quiet with the huntsman. This man, Gibbs, is a clever fellow, and he said the fox ran up the side of the rocky wall quite a long way; he saw the waving of the briers as he ran, and that the seekers had looked much too low down.
"So Percy let him down on a rope from the top—it's a sort of little cliff, you know, too steep for a man to climb just there—and they found the cave mouth under a great growth of blackberry bushes and fern."
"Oh, how exciting!"